Dayton airshow crash, pilot and wing walker killed.
 

Not good judging by the photos

Dayton Air Show: Pilot, stunt woman killed in crash | www.whiotv.com

The announcer's last words bring a chill

Warning. It's heartrending to see.

This video shows smoke from the plane just before the crash

Extended: Wing walker Jane Wicker dies after Dayton plane crash - YouTube

Smoke is probably a transient rich mixture while rolling to negative G. I believe that is normal for the R-985 w/ a "G" valve in the carburetor.

To me he looks like pretty low airspeed entering the roll, he recognized IAS falling off, but started his rollout too late.

Here's an interview with her -
Jane Wicker: A life in flight

The outcome is occasionally much less good when someone flying a plane says "watch this". Audiences still pay money to watch someone defy death, and the defying does not always work. As long as audiences will pay, someone will fly. A problem is that now some of those paying people have to explain some unpleasant things to the kids they took to watch.

Airshow pilots will fly lower and slower, and when they cannot maintain control of the aircraft, they have nowhere to go to allow recovery. I cannot comment on whether or not our society needs people out walking in wings, or whether that aircraft was designed to do fly in that configuration. But, our society does not need planes being flown so low and slow, or maneuvered unusually there, that there is no room for recovery following a loss of control. That makes every other pilot seem careless to non aviation people, and again we pilots have a poor stigma to try to distance ourselves from.....

Very sad. Picking up on DAR, I was always taught to give myself options at as many stages of flight as possible.

Is it just the editing or, did it take a while before the fire engine got there?

OAP

One interview says equipment was on site within 30 seconds.

Ancient saying: "You cannot beat the lowest altitude record, but only tie it."

When you look at the movie mentioned in the 3rd post:
You'll notice that right at the point when the plane dives to the ground the left elevator moves direction while the right one remains horizontal. (second 9 to 10 in the movie).

Could not see that properly, not sure of the setup on this aircraft, but certainly on a Tiger Moth the differential ailerons are such that the up going aileron moves a lot while the down going one hardly moves at all - could it be that?

Doesn't a person sitting on the wing (even if it's just one of two in a biplane) massively disturb the airflow on that side? To my amateur eyes it looks like a sudden wing drop on the side with the wing-walker (on the wingtip, too), obviously with no chance of recovery at that height, not any technical problem.

And of course, first and foremost, it looks harrowing :-( At least it was apparently all over very quickly.

You've chosen a superb and appropriate user name. :ok:

I don't see it.

I think this was a case of contaminated airfoil stalling locally, resulting in a spin entry. The contamination was a person.

The wing walker caused the spin entry? One presumes that it wouldn't have been the first time the manoeuvre had been performed so why this time?

Looking at other videos from further down the flight line, the roll ended with the aircraft off the display line and heading towards the crowd line. It then (to me) appears to begin to head back to the display line and flicks out.

Very sad result.

As in other and less public cases, some knots airspeed less than usual would probably be enough for the very sad result.

I guess it could have been due the angle of the filming:

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5528/9...05bdc7d2_b.jpg

Half a second to a second later:

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3733/9...e5970092_b.jpg

Didn't notice at first but in the same timespan the direction of the aileron of the leftside wing has changed also.

Now I see the point, was looking at aileron not elevator, in spite of what was posted!

adverse yaw.

DAR has it. The second video in this thread (discounting the withdrawn one) clearly shows a sudden stall of the wings with the person on, and resultant roll into the ground.

A combination of high angle of attack and disturbed airflow caused by the person. As has been said, the pilot would have been aware he was running out of energy, but had absolutely nowhere to go.